The Three Body Problem

Chapter 10

The next few weeks were surprisingly less awkward than all three of them had been expecting. The other hermits took to the Watcher and Poultry Man shockingly well, and soon it was like they'd all been playing on the server together for ages. The Watcher was, by far, the most apprehensive. Poultry Man was not apprehensive in the slightest, and revelled in every chance he got to pelt people with eggs in public.

After about the first week, the hermits had begun figuring out "tells" for who was in charge of the body at any given time. The Watcher's movements tended to be more fluid and elegant than Grian or Poultry Man's, and was likely to wait for other people to initiate a conversation. The hermits were used to being around Grian, and could discern his mannerisms fairly easily. As for Poultry Man - well, the eggs tended to give him away.

Sometimes, they switched control in the middle of a conversation and forgot to mention it, which made it harder for the hermits to figure out who they were talking to. Iskall made them a pin with three sections - red for Grian, blue for the Watcher, and yellow for Poultry Man - and a little arrow to point at the section of whoever was in charge at the moment.

They still had issues, of course. The Watcher hadn't been magically healed of their trauma, Poultry Man took jokes too far, and Grian got snappish with the both of them from time to time. Time alone would have been nice, but time alone is nigh impossible to come by when one shares a body with two other entities.

The Watcher mentioned this in passing to Xisuma, who asked, "Can't you each get your own body?"

The Watcher shook their head. "Poultry Man might be able to, but I can't leave. I've tried."

"Why can't you leave?"

They shrugged. "We don't know. It might have something to do with the fact that I'm a Void creature."

"Isn't Poultry Man also -"

"Poult is a completely different story. He just happened to end up there. I'm... I don't entirely know how to explain it properly. I'm made from the Void."

"From the Void?" Xisuma had a bit of a peculiar look on his face, like he'd just found the last piece in a 5000 piece puzzle but it didn't look anything like he'd expected it to look.

The Watcher narrowed their eyes. "Yes."

"You know, I might actually be able to help you," he said. "Not me, myself, but I've got a friend who owes me a favour."

"What can your friend do?"

"He might be able to give you separate bodies."

------

"We need to make a decision about what Xisuma told us," said Grian. "First things first: do we even actually want separate bodies?"

i don't, confessed Poultry Man, his presence smaller and shyer than usual.

Is that because you're afraid of being alone again, or because you genuinely enjoy sharing a body?

Even smaller now. the first one.

Poult. As long as I live, you will never ever ever be alone again.

"Same goes for me," said Grian. "If you still want to share the body, though, that's completely fine. Don't change your mind because you think we want you too."

i do enjoy sharing a body, he began slowly, but it would be nice to be able to do my own thing. like during the civil war. if i had my own body, wouldn't have had to go AFK. but even though i know, logically, that i won't be alone, it's - it's terrifying, frankly. i don't know if i want to separate or not.